Look Up, Lean In, and Live!

Luke 21:25-36

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

“Drunkenness” I get. “Worries of this life” I also get… by the bucketful.  But “dissipation”… that one I had to look up. Dissipation, it turns out, is wasting stuff or squandering things. Spending money, time, or resources and getting nothing in return. It’s basically running around like a chicken with your head cut off! It’s spinning your wheels. It’s spending tons of energy but not making any progress. It’s not all bad though, because “dissipation” is also how the brakes on your car work. You push the brake pedal and your brakes change forward momentum into heat which is then lost or “dissipated” into the atmosphere. Now, hold onto that last definition in particular while I tell you something you already know.

  

We live in fairly horrible times. I told you it was something you already knew! We live in a time where I’m daily tempted to say, “The day is surely coming, says the Lord” and I’m not talking about the good stuff coming either!  It’s a time where it feels like watching the news blots the sun out in the sky and there is not shortage of distress among nations! We live in a time where we are overwhelmed by noise. Noise so loud it’s like the roar of the sea! Like a never ending set of waves crashing over us, knocking us off our feet, over and over again with wave after wave of tear gassing children, racism, hatred, mass shootings and all the rest. It makes us faint from fear and foreboding.

One of the ways folks handle this modern, 24 hour news-cycle-apocalypse of horrible-ness, is the same way folks in Jesus’ day tried to handle it… with drunkenness and worry! Even today, folks try to drink it, shop it, medicate it, or eat it away. A friend recently shared a magazine cover that promised  you could even “decorate” the troubles of the world away for the holidays! So living in ways that try to escape the crazy horrible-ness of the world is one way to deal with life out there.  

And it turns out that just like in Jesus’ day, some folks also try to use dissipation. As the crazy train of life barrels down the tracks, folks are tempted at to pull the world’s emergency cord, get the engineer to slam on the brakes, so we can get off in some idealistic bygone era. A time when our far-from-accurate memories remember things were better… when the world wasn’t so frightening… back to a time when things were GREAT. Unfortunately, brakes mean “dissipation” and when folks try to slam on the world’s brakes, all that crazy energy of the world barreling down the tracks on this runaway train we call life, inevitably gets turned into white-hot heat which shows up as hatred, anger, bigotry, racism, violence and rage.

Neither escaping the world nor dissipating the world’s crazy turns out to be the faithful ways Jesus recommends for dealing with a troubling world, either then or now. Neither numbing ourselves NOR trying to grind the world to a halt will bring us the peace we all so desperately desire. Instead, Jesus says the way to deal with a world barreling down the tracks through crazy town after crazy town, is to STAND UP, RAISE YOUR HEADS, LOOK UP and SEE your redemption drawing near… Jesus says, we need to LOOK UP, LEAN IN and LIVE! 

Each alert, headline, and piece of breaking news begs us look down at our phones, look down at the headlines, and look down at this world and fully plumb the depths of it’s  horrible-ness. But with heads constantly down, we end up festering in it… immobilized. Jesus tells us instead to “LOOK up!” Because when we raise our heads and look up, what we’ll see is that Christ is present among us… standing right beside us… even in all this mess!  And in some mysterious way, God in Christ, is making even this crazy, horrible-ness into something new! 

That’s one reason each week some guy in an attention grabbing outfit, stands up there, with a shiny bald head, holding a shiny silver patten, and a shiny silver chalice as high as he can. So that everyone (including the joker holding all that silverware) might be challenged to LOOK UP from the screens and the papers and the worries of the world and SEE that in some mysterious way, Christ really is RIGHT HERE… with us in the bread and wine, making even this insane crazy-train of a world new again with light and love and life.  

It’s also one of the reasons we give each other a sign of God’s peace for so long that it makes some of us introverts itch… because sharing the peace asks us to LEAN IN and see Christ in the eyes of the people we greet. In one another’s eyes, we’re reminded again and again that we are not alone. It’s also one of the reasons we shout, “Thanks be to God, Alleluia, Alleluia!” at the end of our worship. Because when we LOOK UP and see Christ rising in our midst… when we LEAN IN and see Christ alive in the eyes of our neighbors and when we hear one another shout Alleluia! We’re both inspired and empowered, not to ESCAPE the world or try to stop the world and get off, but to jump right INTO THE WORLD… right smack dab into the deep end of the crazy, and SHOW the world what it looks like to really LIVE this life we’ve been given! We shout “Alleluia!” because God has chosen US, to jump into this pond we call our world and let the ripples of our lives lived in kindness, compassion, generosity and love radiate out from this place far beyond where we might ever be able to see or imagine.

The world doesn’t need us hiding in fear. The world doesn’t need us trying to grind it to a stop. The world doesn’t need us looking for signs in the stars or the moon or in headlines or in breaking news. What the world needs… is for each and every one of us to LOOK UP, LEAN IN AND LIVE the life we’ve been given as a gift from God. To jump into the world with an Alleluia cannonball that will soak all of creation from head to toe with the power of God’s love, transforming even this current world’s horrible-ness into a life of abundant joy for ALL of creation. Our call for this Advent is to LOOK UP, LEAN IN, AND LIVE! Amen.